Creating an Advanced Report

The Advanced Reporting feature allows you to create a report from different data sets and also provides for setting up a sub-report within a report. Several formatting options are available for the report data, including different font sizes and styles, headers and footers, and grouping data to maximize readability. Advanced Reporting gives you full control over the design of your reports.

A

Navigation Toolbar

Click on Reports to display a menu, and then select Reports to display the Report Browse screen.

Note: If Reports is not in your Navigation Toolbar, you do not have any Reporting permissions.

B

New Report Types button

Click to display a menu, and select Advanced Report. If the Advanced Report option is not in the menu, you do not have permissions to run an advanced report.

Note: Based on your user permissions, the New Report and Advanced Report buttons may display instead of the New Report Types menu.

In the example below, we are creating an Advanced Report that will contain a list of all companies in the database and their contracts, as well as the documents and events associated with each contract. Therefore, the report requires two primary groups (company and contract) and two sub-groups (documents and events).

C

Entity field

Click on the list arrow in the field to display the Company, Project, and Request folders. To create a report on company contracts, for example, click on the Expand arrow to the left of the Company folder to display a list of all reporting fields available for companies, and then click on Contract. Company --> Contract appears in the Entity field to identify Company and Contract as the two primary groups in your report.

D

Report Name field

Enter a name for the report.

E

Report Group list

This field is automatically populated by the system based on the selections you made in the Entity field. The selection determines which group this report will be displayed under in the Report Browse screen. However, you can edit the field by making another selection in the list.

F

Description field

Provide a description of the report, if desired.

Note: If the text you enter exceeds the viewing area of the field, click the Expand link to display a window that will allow you to view the text in its entirety.

G

Page Size list

Change the default (Letter) if you are printing your report on paper that is not 8-1/2 by 11 inches. The other options are Legal, A4, and A3.

H

Orientation list

Change the default (Portrait) to Landscape if your report will contain multiple fields and/or if you want to increase the spacing between columns.

I

Custom radio button

Click the button if the paper you are using for your report is not letter, legal, A4, or A3. Use the sizing arrows to set the width and height of your report page in pixels.

J

Next button

Click to display a screen that will allow you to select the fields that you want in your report, set up sub-reports, and design the report using various formatting options.

K

Primary Table folder

Click to display a list of the available fields for the Primary Table (e.g., Company) in the Fields section of the screen.

Note: Use the scroll bar to view all the available fields.

L

Fields list

Click on all the primary fields you want to appear in the report (e.g., Company Name, Company Number). The selected fields display in the report layout in both the Column Headerand Detailsections.

Note: The Column Headers are the labels or column headings in the report and the Detail is the data (i.e., search results) that appears under each column heading.

You can move a field within the report layout by clicking on the field, and then dragging and dropping it to a new location. You can also resize a field by "mousing over" the right or left border of the field until the horizontal arrow icon displays, and then dragging the border of the field to increase or decrease its width. To increase or decrease the height of a field, "mouse over" the top or bottom border of the field until the vertical arrow icon displays, and then drag the border of the field to the desired height.

M

Secondary Table folder

Click to display a list of the available fields for Secondary Table (e.g., Contract) in the Fields section of the screen. Use the scroll bar to view all the available fields in the list.

N

Fields list

Click on all the secondary fields you want to appear in the report (e.g., Contract Type, Agreement Type, Contract Number, Effective Date, Original Expiration Date, and Contract Value). The selected fields display in the report layout in both the Column Header and Detail sections.

Note: If you want to remove a selected field from the report layout, right click on the field to display a prompt. If you are deleting a column header or a detail, be sure to delete the field from both the Column Header and Detail sections.

Setting Up a Sub-Report

The sub-reporting option allows you to add additional tiers of data to your report, such as a list of all the documents and events associated with a contract.

A

Contract folder

Right-click on any folder to display an Add Subreport button.

B

Add Subreport button

Click to display a Sub Report Table dialogue box.

C

Sub Report Table list

Locate the first table (data set) you want included in your report (e.g., Document), and click on it to select it.

D

OK button

Click to add the table to the sub-report. A pink rectangular field displays in the Detail section of the report layout.

E

Sub Report section

Double-click on the pink rectangular field to activate it and display a blue sub-report (SR) heading. A navigational icon appears when you mouse over the activated field. Drag and drop the sub-report to the location in the Detail section where you want this information displayed.

Note: You can also resize the sub-report by mousing over any border (top, bottom, right, left) until the icon or the icon displays, and then dragging the sub-report to the desired size.

F

SR:[Field] folder

Click to display a list of the available fields for the sub-report in the Fields section of the screen.

G

Fields list

Click on all the fields you want to appear in the sub-report (e.g., Document File Name, Document Type, Document Revision, and Document Expiration Date). The selected fields display in the sub-report. Size the sub-report by dragging the borders, and also size and re-position the fields in the sub-report, as desired.

You can change the height of all the sections in the report layout (Title, Page Header, Column Header, Detail, etc.) by "mousing over" the bottom of each section until the icon displays, and then dragging the border to the desired height.

H

Add Text Field button

Click if you want to provide a column heading for the sub-report. A blank text field displays inside the Detail section of the screen.

Note: You may have to use the scroll bar at the bottom of the report layout to view the new text field.

I

Blank Text field

Click inside the field to activate it, and then drag-and-drop the field above the sub-report since it will be the column heading for the sub-report.

J

Field Value field

Make sure the new text field is selected, and then click in the Field Value field in the Properties grid, and enter the text you want to display as the heading for the sub-report (e.g., DOCUMENTS).

K

Properties Grid

If you want to format the properties for the heading, such as making the text bold, changing the color of the text, or increasing the font size, use the other fields in the grid.

L

Sub Report sections

Add as many sub-reports as you like to the report layout by repeating Steps A-K above.